Discover more from Bob Olson Connect: Afterlife Investigator

Articles offering reflective insights on life and the afterlife. From a private eye who investigated life after death for 26 years. Bob shares meaningful stories to expand minds, comfort grief, and uplift souls. More info at www.BobOlsonConnect.com

Over 18,000 subscribers

As Luck Would Have It: A Los Angeles Carjacking

After a harrowing encounter in Santa Monica, I learned a valuable lesson about luck.

Bob Olson

Apr 14, 2023

108

If you’re enjoying my articles, please click the ❤️ button above so more people can discover it on Substack, thanks!

Hollywood, California — Photo by izayah ramos on Unsplash

In 1990, my wife, Melissa, and I lived in Los Angeles for a year. Being in our 20s and just getting started in life, we decided to try city life for a change. We had a Ford Bronco II that was constantly in the mechanic shop so, one day, after our little SUV was towed to the garage for repairs, I had to rent a car.

Although I rented the cheapest car the rental company offered, they upgraded me to a mid-size car since they didn’t have any cheap cars left. They gave me a brand new, red Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which I thought was just the coolest car in the world. In fact, my first car was a 1971 Cutlass, and it’ll always be my favorite. So to drive a new Cutlass Supreme for a couple days was testosterone bliss.

About 11:00 that night, it was time to pick Melissa up from work. She was working at Pier 1 Imports in Santa Monica. It was Christmas season, so they were open later than normal, and I had to wait in the car for her to close the store.

Melissa was the assistant manager, so she was always the last one to leave. I was so used to waiting for her that it wasn’t unusual for me to fall asleep in the parking lot. And while I normally sat in my car with the windows open (it was Southern California after all), this particular night was chilly so I kept the windows closed. The truth is that I was sitting in the car playing with the electric windows and door locks to entertain my boredom. Not having these luxuries in my own car, I had a slight fascination with them.

At one point, I noticed in my rear-view mirror that five young guys in their late teens or early twenties were walking into the parking lot. I didn’t think much of it and assumed they were just passing through. Then I noticed one of them was standing to my right by the passenger’s side door with a smile on his face.

Since I was used to people in the city asking for spare change, I expected this was what the guy wanted. After all, I was now sitting in a brand-new sporty car, so I probably looked like I had money to spare. As I was about to roll down the window to talk to him, I noticed all five guys had surrounded my car. One stood in front of my car, one behind it, two at either door on my side of the car, and then there was this guy smiling at me through the front passenger’s side door.

Before I had a chance to think, the three guys at the doors were attempting to open them. Lucky for me, I had unknowingly left all the doors locked when I was playing with the lock button. Within seconds after failing to open my doors, the guy standing beside me began to beat on my window with his fist, which had absolutely no effect on the glass. That’s when he pulled a gigantic screwdriver out of his belt that must have been a foot long.

This was all happening so fast that my brain hadn’t yet acknowledged that I was being carjacked. Yet it took only a few seconds for my mind and body to kick into fight or flight mode. I now knew I had to get the heck out of there, but I faltered when trying to get the engine started because I was unfamiliar with the car. My first reaction was to reach for the key on my Bronco, only to find it was in a completely different location on the Cutlass.

As I stammered to start the car, the guy at my door began jamming the foot-long screwdriver into the side of the window where it met the door. He forced it with all his might to buckle and shatter the glass. Instead of the glass breaking, the molding around the window fell to the ground. Frustrated yet determined, the carjacker turned the screwdriver around and began slamming it like a hammer into my window.

At this point, my hearing went silent, and I’m pretty sure the entire universe began moving in slow motion. I’m certain there must have been a loud crack each time he slammed the screwdriver into the glass, but I wasn’t hearing it. I was protecting my eyes from the broken glass that was sure to cover my face and body, which further distracted me from finding the shifter. Despite his relentless efforts, the window refused to break.

I finally got the car into drive and slammed my foot on the gas pedal. The guy standing in front of the car must have heard the transmission shift into gear, because his eyes opened wide as he dove to the side. The red Cutlass Supreme shot forward. Two guys on either side of the car quickly jumped on the hood and the trunk, only to sail into the air as I turned the corner around the building.

I drove behind Pier 1 Imports, arriving at an adjacent street, forcing me to stop and wait for traffic. In seconds, all five guys had caught up to me and were back to slamming my windows with the screwdriver and their fists. The windows bent and bowed but would not break.

Once traffic allowed, I spun into the street and sped down to a gas station about a quarter mile away. I jumped out of the car to a payphone (cell phones were still a luxury I couldn’t afford) and called Melissa on the office phone, now worried she might leave the building at any moment.

Payphone photo by Peter Conrad on Unsplash

Melissa answered immediately.

“Don’t leave the building!” I shouted.

“I won’t,” Melissa told me. “I’m alone and someone’s trying to break into the back door. I had already shut all the lights off. I’m now hiding under the desk in the back office. I have the desk phone under here with me.”

I was perplexed. I could only assume the carjackers decided to turn their frustrated energy into burglarizing Pier 1 Imports, not realizing—or caring—that someone was inside.

“I’ll be right there,” I told her. “Call 911.”

“I did! Dispatcher told me to go into the store to see if anyone’s there, so I hung up on her. That’s when you called.”

“What, leave the office phone to see if someone broke in? That’s horrible advice! Call back. You’ll likely get another dispatcher. I’m on my way.”

I raced back to Pier 1 and looped around the building. There was no one in sight. By the time I got out of the Cutlass Supreme, the police arrived by car and helicopter. The helicopter spotlight lit up the whole parking lot.

As I explained what was happening to the police, I knew Melissa was still locked inside and hiding under the desk. (A cellphone would have been nice in this moment.) One officer radioed the dispatcher, who was still on the phone with Melissa. They let Melissa know we were waiting outside the front door.

Once she knew I was outside the building, Melissa crawled out from under the desk and sprinted across the dark store toward the front door. She frantically unlocked the door and ran outside. Although she was expecting to see me and the police, she was met by a woman pushing a shopping cart on the sidewalk. They nearly collided. Already frightened and stressed, Melissa was startled by the woman, adding a moment of comic relief when Melissa realized it was just someone walking by. Once she spotted me and the police, she let out a sigh of relief and began laughing with tears in her eyes.

The Question of Being Lucky

The police didn’t catch the carjackers, but Melissa and I were safe. The officers told me I was lucky. They informed me that carjackers typically shoot the driver through the window, getting access to the car and eliminating the threat of the driver at the same time. They added that the screwdriver was likely meant to stab me if they had gotten the door open.

In the days that followed, everyone who heard this story seemed to feel I was lucky. I was lucky that I left the doors locked after playing with the lock button. I was lucky that the windows didn’t break. I was lucky that it was unusually chilly this night so that I had the windows closed instead of open as usual. I was even lucky that I was awake instead of sleeping. Just imagine how long it would have taken me to react if I were sleeping.

On the other hand, I also recognize that I was unlucky that my car broke down because that led me to rent a nice car. Nobody would have wanted to carjack my crappy Bronco II. I was also unlucky that the car rental company was out of cheap rental cars, so they upgraded me to a mid-sized car, a brand-new Cutlass Supreme in red. I was also unlucky that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, meaning I was right in the random path of these thugs who saw my fancy sports car as they were walking down the street.

So was I lucky or unlucky? We can ask ourselves these questions all day long.

Was I lucky that I beat my illness or unlucky that I got sick in the first place?
Was I lucky that I won at the casino or unlucky that I got robbed in the parking lot?
Was I lucky to have survived the plane crash or unlucky the plane crashed at all?
Was I lucky that my team won or was the other team unlucky and lost? And what does that mean when my team loses tomorrow; does luck change from day to day, hour to hour, or minute to minute?

What if this is not a matter of luck at all? What if this is simply a matter of experiencing life, knowing that good and bad things will happen, and moving forward in the best way possible without giving the incident a label or placing responsibility for it anywhere or on anyone?

In this way, this true story provokes a timeless question, one to which we may never know the answer. Is there really such a thing as luck or is it our glass-half-empty or glass-half-full perspective that makes us lucky or unlucky?

Thinking of it that way, I’m going to interpret the outcome of this story as me being lucky. After all, if we truly do attract what we expect from life, I’d rather go through life viewing myself as lucky.

Thanks for reading my story. What does this story make you think or feel? I would love to hear from you. Warmly, Bob